August of Sachsen-Weissenfels held the Archbishopric of Magdeburg as a Protestant administrator — not a Catholic prelate — a compromise arrangement formalized under the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The city itself had been catastrophically sacked and nearly annihilated by Imperial forces in 1631, killing upward of 20,000 civilians in what became one of the Thirty Years' War's most notorious episodes. These fractional thalers were struck less than two decades after Westphalia, from an archbishopric still rebuilding both its physical infrastructure and its administrative authority.
August died in 1680, and with him ended the Protestant administration of Magdeburg, which then passed to Brandenburg.
August of Sachsen-Weissenfels held the Archbishopric of Magdeburg as a Protestant administrator — not a Catholic prelate — a compromise arrangement formalized under the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The city itself had been catastrophically sacked and nearly annihilated by Imperial forces in 1631, killing upward of 20,000 civilians in what became one of the Thirty Years' War's most notorious episodes. These fractional thalers were struck less than two decades after Westphalia, from an archbishopric still rebuilding both its physical infrastructure and its administrative authority.
August died in 1680, and with him ended the Protestant administration of Magdeburg, which then passed to Brandenburg.